Tag: yep

But it’s also odd that Limbaugh would cite his experience in Hawaii as evidence that the U.S. health care system is “fine” seeing that Hawaii has already passed reform measures similar to those that Congress is currently considering as part of comprehensive reform — measures that Limbaugh has constantly been attacking.

Citing Experience In Hawaii, Limbaugh Says U.S. Health Care System Is ‘Just Dandy’ (via ryking).

So true. My recent voyage to Texas resulted in a similar experience: was asked how I expected I’d feel living under a mandate. Uh, we’ve had a mandate for TWO YEARS in Massachusetts. The information-free zone of FOXnews and talk radio is as poisonous as it is pervasive. Empirical reality: utterly beside the point.

MPERUPIT

  • If terrorists successfully attack during a Democratic president’s first year in office (first attack on World Trade Center), it’s the Democrats’ fault, and the attack is good news for Republicans.
  • If terrorists unsuccessfully attack during a Democratic president’s second term, it’s the Democrats’ fault the terrorists even tried, and the attack is good news for Republicans.
  • If terrorists successfully attack during a Republican president’s first year in office (9/11), it’s the Democrats’ fault, and the attack is good news for Republicans.
  • If terrorists unsuccessfully attack during a Republican president’s second term, it’s only because the Republican is “taking the fight to the enemy,” and the attack is good news for Republicans.
  • If terrorists unsuccessfully attack during a Democratic president’s first year in office, it’s the Democrats’ fault the terrorists even tried, and the attack is good news for Republicans.

This helpful guide brought to you by Steve Benen and the Washington Monthly. Clip and save.

I’m left fearing the future of America’s leadership on the world stage of science and technology.
This leadership, as any historian will tell you, drives the economic strength and security of nations. The fall is not from a cliff. More like a slow, downward slide – almost imperceptible from day to day. But as the years pass America will have descended from leaders to players to merely followers as we fade to insignificance, at best hitching a ride on the innovations of others.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist, American Museum of Natural History. This is indeed what the far right know-nothings are toying with every time they make temporary political hay on their various anti-intellectual screeds; sadly, Tyson points to an outcome as predictable as it is inevitable. The wages of this sort of systematic denialism of empirical reality are secondary and tertiary status in research and, by extension, our national economic output and potential. Please do check the trend lines of global academic citations of North American science vs. Western European if you doubt me.

Fixing the problem doesn’t mean voting out the feckless Democrats or the obstructionist Republicans. It doesn’t even mean voting out Senator Lieberman. As long as our legislative process is held in thrall to an economy of influence that nearly requires members to play nice with the special interests, the will of the people — on the left and on the right — will continue to be stymied on every issue, in every Congress, under every administration.

Lawrence Lessig (via squashed)

if I could construct a system in which insurers spent 90 percent of every premium dollar on medical care, never discriminated against another sick applicant, began exerting real pressure for providers to bring down costs, vastly simplified their billing systems, made it easier to compare plans and access consumer ratings, and generally worked more like companies in a competitive market rather than companies in a non-functional market, I would take that deal. And if you told me that the price of that deal was that insurers would move from being the 86th most profitable industry to being the 53rd most profitable industry, I would still take that deal.

Ezra Klein (once again: exactly fucking right). Trouble is, the next “compromise” will be on not limiting profit margins in this way.

The Mortal Majority

jimray:

“…although the end-of-life use of Medicare is a government problem that violates almost every philosophy [Republicans] espouse about the proper role of government—public sector over private; easily exploited by, rather than protected from, trial lawyers; a moral hazard, consequence-free billing system as opposed to rational, need-based spending; a program with rising outlays as opposed to slow or zero growth outlays—Medicare is instead the very program they are rallying behind. And why? For votes—specifically the votes of those angry, mostly-white seniors upon whom they are betting their electoral fortunes in 2010 and beyond. In short, the GOP has now become so wedded to its dying, white majority that it is willing to sacrifice not only good public policy and smart long-term budgeting, but its very own core principles.”

— Tom Schaller over at FiveThirtyEight on the Republican party’s identity crisis.

All I have to say to this is: absolutely goddamned right. And, worst of all, they seem to think this is a winning strategy going forward. And it may just appear to be so (briefly) come 2010. Bad bad bad for the country all the way around. Policy matters not, it’s simply a movement based on pure fear, uncertainty, and doubt. An economic rebound will help, but only somewhat. Until we’re largely through this demographic shift, I suspect the country will only become more and more ungovernable. Something has got to give.